Jul 12, 2019

The EdgeTier team after winning Google's Adopt a Startup programme for 2019. Image: Chris Bellew/Fennel Photography A Dublin start-up that offers clients an AI customer support agent called Arthur has been named of Google’s Adopt a Startup programme 2019. After beating off stiff competition  at a pitch event in front of a panel of experienced judges, Dublin AI start-up EdgeTier was crowned winner of this year’s Google Adopt A Startup for its efforts to bring automation to the customer support sector. The company’s automated assistant, Arthur, uses AI, analytics and machine learning to quickly generate personalised responses to a variety of customer queries. The software is designed to work with human customer support staff to answer complex customer queries more efficiently and accurately. EdgeTier said that Arthur has so far decreased query handling times by up to 80pc while providing administrators a detailed view of the data behind their contact centre operations. As part of the Google prize, it will now receive €10,000 in Google Ads credit and will become eligible for the Google Cloud Platform for start-ups which come with $100,000 Google Cloud credit. EdgeTier recently secured a €1.5m seed funding round from UK and Irish-based investors and its CEO, Dr Shane Lynn, said this will enable the firm to aggressively grow the company in the coming months in addition to being aided by the Google prize. “The insights from Google’s Adopt a Startup programme will help us to scale more effectively, avoiding pitfalls along the way,” he said. “Customer service is a gigantic market; there are over 6,000 customer contact centres in the UK alone.” Speaking of the company’s competition success, Google Ireland’s director Paddy Flynn said: “I think the opportunity for EdgeTier to grow is extremely high. The market segment they are targeting is ripe for the AI based solution they have developed. They are in the right place, at the right time with the right product to achieve success.” Four other finalists took part in the last pitch event including Allergy Lifestyle, SureSitter, Vrai and Coroflow. Allergy Lifestyles came in second place receiving €5,000 in Google Ads credit while Coroflow came in third place receiving €3,000 in Google Ads credit. SureSitter was awarded a special prize of three months free hotdesking at co-working space Dogpatch Labs.